


Ever After (Pain)

by EssayOfThoughts



Series: MCU Maximoff Oneshots [123]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Codependency, Gen, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Suicidal Thoughts, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-16
Updated: 2017-05-16
Packaged: 2018-11-01 15:33:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,189
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10924779
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EssayOfThoughts/pseuds/EssayOfThoughts
Summary: Pain is this street and that alleyway, that abandoned house, that charitable clinic. That church ruin they used to hide in, that synagogue their parents took them to (that pile of rubble where once they had lived).That graveyard.





	Ever After (Pain)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Nanyoky](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nanyoky/gifts), [TobermorianSass](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TobermorianSass/gifts), [malapropism](https://archiveofourown.org/users/malapropism/gifts).



> Based on a similar idea to [_Fear In A Handful Of Dust_](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7909111). I listened to [_Believer_ by Imagine Dragons](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhP3J0j9JmY) on a loop while writing this, listening to this may help you hit the beats of the fic.

**i.**  
This is pain: watching their parents die.

This is pain: the beams on his back, splitting his skin.

They breathe in more dust than air and ever after their breaths come a little short. Pietro’s back strains to keep the beams off Wanda and ever after his back aches. Wanda watches the bomb and the chasm, Father’s twitching leg, Mutti’s wedding band glinting in the bomb’s light and ever after some part of her heart feels empty.

Ever after they will carry the scars of this day.

 

* * *

 

 **ii.**  
This is pain: watching their parents coffins lower into the ground.

This is pain: the weight of the stones in his hands as he sets them by the gravestones.

Their breaths catch in their throats, not just dust but poison-lead _grief._ Pietro’s hands weigh down with stones even when empty. Wanda’s heart feels yet more hollow.

They are barely ten years old.

 

* * *

 

 **iii.**  
This is pain: having to decide between faith and safety.

This is pain: giving up one for the other.

They breathe in heavy breaths, stones catching in their throats like remembrance. Pietro sheds faith like a snake sheds its skin: God did not save them, nor angels, nor demons. Sokovia saved them, Wanda kept him sane. Faith slips off his back like water off a duck. Wanda sheds faith slowly, fingers scrabbling for fragments of it, for their parents, for pebbles.

Pietro remembers for the one who kept him sane and faith becomes the first thing they set aside.

 

* * *

 

 **iv.**  
They have no strength but each other, no certainty but each other, no faith in anything but each other. It is not arrogance that makes them ignore all else, nor disgust, but grief and pain, deep-rooted anchors in their hearts and psyches that tearing out might destroy them.

Pain is this: seeing Pietro twist himself around her and being unable to refuse it.

Pain is this: seeing some part of Wanda crumble each time she shoulders a burden he cannot share.

It no longer matters. Pain is all they remember, vengeance is all they know. Pain is this: their hollowing hearts.

 

* * *

 

 **v.**  
Pain is this: their country screaming with every protest, every protester clubbed down, tear gas and rubber bullets, chaos and trampling feet.

Pain is this: a broken hand, the look in Wanda’s eye as hope is over and over lost, the certainty that their vengeance may well never be achieved.

Their lungs feel empty, their hearts heavy, their stomachs emptier still, like the churning rocks of a raging river. Wanda’s rage is a tide, Pietro’s a wave, and they batter themselves against great walls of injustice.

They have lost faith. They discard hope. They cling to anger and vengeance and each other like a lifeline.

 

* * *

 

 **vi.**  
Pain is this: a protest once more interrupted by soldiers.

Pain is this: hope.

 _We can give you power,_ the man says. _We can give you strength. You hate the Avengers, you wish to fight them?_

**_So do we._ **

Faith is gone, and hope. Belief in anything but each other is faint.

Vengeance fills their hollow hearts instead.

 

* * *

 

 **vii.**  
The castle is empty. It has been so all their lives. A huge and hulking ruin resting on the rise of the mountains, watching over the city that was-is their home. They follow the path of the soldiers and the doctors, the tracked bootprints that make snow into slush, soil into mud, and make their way to the castle gates.

The have strength, a strength these people will not ever understand, a power rooted in pain and loss, rooted in themselves. They have hatred, yes, but that is rooted in something deeper, in the reason they need the power these strangers offer.

Vengeance.

Pain is this: seeking vengeance all their lives.

Pain is this: what they go through so they have the power to achieve it.

 

* * *

 

 **viii.**  
Pain is pain is pain and Wanda and Pietro’s knuckles whiten as the virus speeds through their veins, as the power unknown and unspoken of etches new words out of their cells, new strengths and new powers and remakes them into something strong enough to take vengeance for their parents.

They rise, they cling to each other, and neither cares for how Pietro shakes or Wanda’s scarlet.

They survived. They are strong. No one will come between them and their vengeance.

 

* * *

 

 **ix.**  
They train. Wanda’s scarlet tears out of her in rage, screams in fury, floats free in dreams and nightmares, intangible scarlet catching at the edge of her thoughts as much as everyone else’s and it takes her weeks to tame. Pietro’s speed is worse - not intangible but _present,_ ever-straining to be felt, and he feels like a straining spring against an unending pressure.

Pain is this: Wanda’s fingers straining against the intangible and the very universe, reality itself, at once.

Pain is this: Pietro ceding to his power, his own strength naught against it and having to flex to fit.

They continue. They persevere, They cannot ever give up.

 

* * *

 

 **x.**  
Nightmares return. Nightmares fade. Wanda’s scarlet tangles in their minds, sends fear away, makes nightmares gone. Pietro’s arms wrap around Wanda, his strength and speed carry them both to safety. His back aches, her heart hollows, their breaths catch.

Some dangerous seed of hope is planted.

 

* * *

 

 **xi.**  
“We could go,” Pietro says.

“We could train,” says Wanda.

Pietro laughs, his hand light on the rail at the end of her bed, ready at any moment to run. “They do not understand you,” he says. “Your powers. Even with the brain scans they do not know how you do what you do. Only that you do.”

Wanda, softly, says, “They do not understand _us.”_

There is no argument here, no dissonant pain. Wanda’s heart hollows, Pietro’s back aches, their breaths catch short.

When the time comes they leave.

 

* * *

 

 **xii.**  
Pain is fear and uncertainty, is seeing the man at fault for all of this, for all their pain, and not laying a finger on him.

Wanda raises a hand, pulls him back. When he looks he can see the scarlet still ephemeral at her fingertips.

Pain is not knowing _how_ this will work, only trusting that it will work. Wanda tucks scarlet away and Pietro unleashes his speed.

 

* * *

 

 **xiii.**  
Pain is this street and that alleyway, that abandoned house, that charitable clinic. That church ruin they used to hide in, that synagogue their parents took them to (that pile of rubble where once they had lived).

That graveyard.

Wanda makes contacts, Pietro thieves.

Her heart hollows, his back aches, their breaths catch short.

They endure the pain.

 

* * *

 

 **xiv.**  
Pain is this: enduring a stranger’s touch on her cheek.

Pain is this: watching a stranger, and trusting them.

Ultron offers more hope, more chance of vengeance, the dangerous seed growing in their chests, out of their hearts, around their desires for each other’s safety and their eternal vengeance, wrapping around that which they have always wanted and using it to grow.

“Together we can ruin the Avengers,” Ultron promises them. “Together, we can make them tear themselves apart.”

There is no catharsis here, no tearing them apart with their own two hands, their own two powers, Wanda’s scarlet, Pietro’s speed, ready weapons to at last take their vengeance.

They are restrained, held back to a plan that asks them only to do things at a distance, not to tear apart the man who’s bomb orphaned them, who let them know pain so well.

Fists curl, nails cut into flesh. Hearts hollow, backs ache, their breaths catch in their throats.

Pain grows its roots into them as hope does.

 

* * *

 

 **xv.**  
“You two can still walk away from this.”

But they will, they will. With their strength in each other, their faith in each other, their trust in each other they can never die; with their powers they will not fail, with Ultron at their side they cannot lose.

“Oh,” Wanda says, “we will.”

They have endured pain, they have had their breaths catch in their lungs with dust, they have watched their parents die, they have split their skin to keep some fragile safety. Have listened to the shifting bricks and thought, over and over, _we will die._

They walked the streets of their city, railed against injustice and no one listened, no one heard.

They will be heard now, every ounce of pain they have ever felt.

 

* * *

 

 **xvi.**  
Wanda wreaks it in their minds: pain.

Pietro wreaks it on their bodies: pain.

Nightmares and bruises, twisted memories and dreams, nightmares made as real as touching while Ultron wrestles his maker over the mudflats and the shore.

Pain is this: lightning bolting into Pietro’s mind as bright as his own blue and made of nothing but his sister’s pain.

 

* * *

 

 **xvii.**  
Pain is breathing, pain is her brow, pain is the cold air on it, is her brother’s worrying hands on her shoulders, is trying to focus against the bruising agony of her brow.

Pain is seeing Wanda in pain, seeing his sister suffering, is knowing he cannot yet take vengeance on the one to do this to her, that he must wait, wait for her word.

They keep to the plan, Wanda’s decision as law.

Pain is seeing all the destruction they cause through another’s fists.

 

* * *

 

 **xviii.**  
“We are like him,” Wanda whispers back at the castle. “Like him.”

He does not have to ask who he is. What happened in Johannesburg, what Hulk did at Wanda’s will, fear and terrified anger tearing out into rage, huge and green and indescribable, is their fault as much their fault as Ultron’s whose plan it was, and, “Hulk is a bomb. We the crafter.”

Wanda’s hand is tight in this, her nails digging into his palms.

“But we need our vengeance.”

 

* * *

 

 **xix.**  
Ultron is a monster. A monster of steel and vibranium, a soul made of metal, as metal as the bomb, as traitorous. But: where the bomb should have exploded it did not. Where Ultron should not have exploded he would. The bomb kept them on edge, waiting and waiting, Pietro’s back straining, Wanda’s heart hollowing, both their breaths catching in their throats.

Ultron had been trust, had been hope, had been aches easing, hollowing filled, breaths coming easy.

 _You are a monster,_ Wanda thinks, scarlet curling free.

They flee. They have to flee, flee the lab, flee the body of Helen Cho, flee Ultron’s bodies and flee into a country they do not know with no plan to save them.

Pain is this: fury at a mistaken choice.

Pain is this: not knowing how to help Wanda.

Pain is everything. Pain is all they have ever known.

 

* * *

 

 **xx.**  
Avengers.

Avengers their enemies, Avengers all they have ever fought against, Avengers all they have ever hated, Stark’s red-and-gold armour gaudy against the sky fighting Ultron as readily as they had.

 _Go,_ Wanda thinks, and Pietro carries her through this unknown city, finds its lifeblood and it’s curve as she had found Novi Grad’s, listening to the very pulse of it to take them to the train.

Ultron pleads, Ultron almost begs, “you do not have to do this.”

Wanda stares at him with scarlet in her eyes, sees the shadows of his shape, hidden amongst the steel, sees his madness, as mad as Stark ever was thinking being a hero could make up for making them orphans.

“What choice do we have?” and its angry and spitting and desperate and frantic and all their _pain,_ shared out over the years.

_You betrayed us. You lied to us. You said you would save the world and this…._

Pietro is sprinting before them, faster than he ever has before, pushing people out of the way, getting everyone clear as best he can while her scarlet dives and delves, holds the axle and the wheels, hopes and prays to hold it back.

_This is nothing but destruction._

 

* * *

 

 **xxi.**  
“We ally to them?” Pietro asks, angry and desperate, pain in his bones, in his back.

“We have to,” Wanda says, heart hollow with hopelessness. “What choice do we have?”

Pietro’s hands are gentle on her cheeks, she knows he can feel how her breath catches, she sees how his does. “Any choice,” he whispers. “Any choice but this.”

 

* * *

 

 **xxii.**  
Stark is a fool, Stark is made of folly, desperation and mourning and frantic with eagerness to fix what he sees as his fault.

 _But I did this too,_ Wanda thinks. She cannot tell them, will not break this fragile trust they have built, but she knows what she did, warping the mind of their enemy, trying, always, to take their vengeance.

Stark made his own destruction.

When the body bursts from the cradle they learn that Ultron made his.

 

* * *

 

 **xxiii.**  
Sokovia. Sokovia and _home._ Novi Grad and the cobbles beneath their feet, cobbles they had always run on. Pietro’s back aches, Wanda’s heart hollows, their breaths catch and they stand up tall, breathe in the mountain air, look out over the dawning city and think, _Home._

They have always sought to protect their home.

Pietro sprints, Wanda’s scarlet warns, weaving through the city in splits of silver, snakes of scarlet, warning everyone she can. _Get out, get out, you must get out, they are coming to_ **_kill you._ **

She does not have to say who. It could be anyone. The police, the soldiers, the rioters and the mobs, the soldiers sent in by America, meddling where they should not. Hate groups and the angry, the disenfranchised and the blamed and those who blamed them, all boiling over with fury.

From the most to the least, the citizens flee.

 

* * *

 

 **xxiv.**  
The earth cracks and quakes beneath her feet and she stumbles.

The earth cracks and quakes beneath his feet and he catches himself.

Down scarlet bonds their minds echo the same. _No. Mutti. Vati. NO!_

Pain is Wanda’s nails digging into her fists, her heart as hollow as a cracked egg and twice as fragile.

Pain is Pietro’s feet skittering like a colts, his back like knives, feeling as though he bleeds out again.

Pain is their breaths catching, fear chasing up their throats with pain.

 

* * *

 

 **xxv.**  
_I did this, I did this,_ **_this is all my fault!_ **

Wanda wants to scream and wants to weep, wants to hide and wants to fight but all she can do is defend, send out frantic scarlet against the bodies Ultron sends against them, shield every citizen she can. She sees children she knows, shop owners, the rabbi from their parent’s synagogue, all of them scurrying to safety.

And because of her. Because she made this choice.

 _Wanda,_ echoes into her mind from her brother but Pietro is the other side of the city, busy with work, saving all he can and fighting, fists flying into steel and silver, vibranium shattering under his knuckles. He cannot focus on her now.

“Wanda, Witch.”

The archer is there, the one she almost made afeared, the one who’s arrow shocked her.

He is unafraid and terrified at once, knuckles pale with stress as he faces her, mind filled with pain and panic.

“I’ll send your brother to come get you if you need me to, but if you step out those doors, you are an Avenger.”

He’s fearing still, fearing and wary, where the Captain offered trust without hesitation. Pain is anchored into his bones, the pain of being made into something he was not, made to obey and not bridle under control as he always had.

Wanda steps out the doors behind him, scarlet singing in her blood.

 

* * *

 

 **xxvi.**  
_I did this. But I will fix this._

Pain is her heart hollowed, her eyes desperate to cry, her hands twisting more scarlet than she has ever dared, tearing apart metal with nothing but her will.

Pain is his back aching, his lungs straining, knowing he should be at his sister’s side and yet knowing he cannot, that they have a greater task.

Pain is their lungs catching short, their breath going.

For once, it is not because of fear or dust.

There simply isn’t enough air.

 

* * *

 

 **xxvii.**  
“Go,” Wanda tells Pietro. “I can handle this.”

He doesn’t want to go, he never has. He bound himself to her side long ago, bound himself by choice, back straining against the beams at ten years old. He has protected her all his life and-

“I can handle this,” she promises, eyes scarlet and certain and she watches him, watches him consider and bow to her will.

Pain is her heart, hollowed, his back, aching, their lungs straining and straining, the ground uncertain beneath their feet, rubble everywhere.

This is too much like when they were ten.

He does not want to go. She does not want him to leave.

“Come back,” she offers, “When everyone else is off, not before.”

 

* * *

 

 **xxviii.**  
The drones are more here, and come from every direction. They dive through the roof, run through the archways, crawl along the floor when her scarlet takes out their legs. Her scarlet protects her from repulsors, her scarlet shields them from the steel shards of their deaths.

Her scarlet tears them to pieces.

Pietro runs, his blue loosing free, his silver bright and solid. The winds of his mind are wild and free, straining loose even of Wanda’s scarlet touch pushing him faster and faster, his fists shattering every drone he comes across.

But fists cannot protect against bullets.

 

* * *

 

 **xxix.**  
Pain is bullets, bullets in his chest, in his lungs, in his arms and legs, he cannot breathe, cannot breathe, his breath catching and catching, dust in his lungs, his back in pain, straining, he needs to move, to run, he has to, he _has to-_

He can’t.

Pain is scarlet, is her hollow heart, is all her anger and fury and sheer unbridled grief tearing out of her. There is no control here, there is not even an attempt to control, it is free and wild, furious and grieving, all she has ever cared for taken from her.

Wanda’s throat bleeds.

 

* * *

 

 **xxx.**  
_You did this._

Scarlet twists in her hands, coils and tautens like tendons, ready at her command.

She is calm and she is furious, she is steady and she is a ship in a storming sea.

“Wanda,” Ultron whispers. “If you stay here you’ll die.”

“I just did,” _I did, I did, you_ **_took him from me._ ** “Do you know how it felt?”

Pain was Pietro’s back aching, old scars and bruises never quite healed as he threw himself in the path of danger.

Pain is her hollow heart, her empty soul, nothing and nobody left to fill it. No brother to love, no vengeance to seek, everything she has ever cared for gone.

Pain is her breath catching, on dust, on tears, on the lack of air.

Ultron’s heart is metal in her hands, dripping oil like blood. She lets it roll across the tram floor as it flies, as it falls, as everything comes to an end.

Pain is living, living and not dying with Pietro.

Pain is pain, ever after.

 

* * *

 

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed this and if you did please leave a comment!


End file.
